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Junkies TBT: When Redskins Fans Were Horny For Zorny!

WASHINGTON — The Junkies have schemed up some wacky ideas to supplement their incomes through the years.

Most of them never made it off the ground floor, but a few of them — the select few that wiggled past the on-air brainstorming filters — did, and proved wildly profitable.

Junkies Throwback Thursday Segment Of The Week

Horny for Zorny

Let’s travel back to 2008. The Redskins had just hired Seattle quarterbacks coach Jim Zorn to coordinate their offense and, less than a month later, promoted him to head coach. The writing should have been on the wall, but no one bothered to notice.

Now, the Zorn-led Redskins stumbled out of the gate, losing their season opener to the Giants, but then rode a wave of success to 6-2. Redskins fans, thinking they’d landed their next Joe Gibbs, could barely contain their medium-ness.

The Junkies struck while the iron was hot by printing up and selling Horny for Zorny t-shirts. They flew off the shelves. John (Cakes) Auville even filed for a money metal trademark.

It was the Junkies’ most successful side venture to date, by far. And then the Redskins went 2-6, missing the playoffs at 8-8. The masses were no longer Horny for Zorny😦

After his 4-12 sophomore season, Zorn was fired😦😦

Cised For Bryce

There was perhaps no greater time to be a Nationals fans than in 2012. Coming off six straight losing seasons, the Nats — at 14-6 — were off to their best start in team history, and were about to call up a 19-year-old phenom by the name of Bryce Harper, the first overall pick in 2010.

Baseball in the nation’s capital was about to be fun!

Taking a cue from their Horny for Zorny idea, the Junkies coined “cised for bryce” and served up t-shirts bearing the phrase. Anyhow, a lot of people bought the shirts and wore them to Nats Park.

But the promotion was short-lived, abandoned altogether when the MLB Players Association began asking questions. It was fun while it lasted.

For those who did receive a shirt, you now have a collectible. The “cised for bryce” movement still lives on in spirit.

Junkies Sports Service

Sometime after Jan. 2005, the Junks spawned an ingenious idea. Then doing middays on WJFK, they arrived at a specific conclusion about their listening audience, that a sizable portion of their listeners were, probably, degenerates. Enough at least to turn a profit.

The Junkies decided, using their radio platform as a promotional tool, to open their own sports service. Its mission? Offering gambling tips — which games to pick, money lines to bet on, etc. — in exchange for money. Their instincts were justified. There was one problem, and it doomed the business from the start, only they didn’t yet know it.

The money they made was stowed away in an online account; they couldn’t get the money out. It’s been said that somewhere, in the deep, dark underbelly of the internet, that money — in what probably amounts to thousands of dollars — still sits. Untouchable.

Chris Lingebach is the head writer for TheFanDC.com. He hosts 'The Download' Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. on 106.7 The Fan.
Email story ideas to him: blueshorts1067@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ChrisLingebach.